


Into the Storm

by JenExell



Series: Sempiternitas [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Aliens, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Au from 2004 onwards, Guns, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:31:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenExell/pseuds/JenExell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU 2004 onwards. The twenty-first century is when it all changes, and for one student on a trip home in July 2004, it all did. Ianto Centric. Eventual Jack/Ianto series, but not in first story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_It was amazing how quickly life could change._

_Blink and you miss it. That defining moment. That single point in time where everything changes. It can happen so fast that it's barely even noticeable, or it can slam into full force, knocking you down, dragging you under._

_One moment you're getting on with your life, dreaming of more but really just hoping that tomorrow will continue much like today. And then it all explodes. Turns inside out and back to front forcing you to learn everything from scratch. Forcing you to open your eyes to what you were never prepared to see. Making you feel so small, so insignificant and at the same time reminding you to count the blessings you have because next time you blink you might not have even those._

_Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Most times it just is. You can either let it define you, or you can define it, but whichever you chose, you have to face it. There is no turning back. No rewinding time. These moments happen, whether we want them to or not._

_I was just a student. Nothing special. Just a student. Just finished my final exams. Looking forward to the future I had planned out for myself. Then I went home._

_I've heard it said the twenty-first century is when everything changes. For me it already has._


	2. Chapter 2

**Cardiff, July 2004**

Four years and things were beginning to come together. As Captain Jack Harkness leant over the gantry rail looking down over his team, he watched them with a considering eye. Just over four years ago he’s looked down from the very same spot, his ears ringing with the silence of an empty Hub. Abandoned workstations, closed doors. The smell of blood and betrayal still lingering in the air.

So long ago that no one human’s memory should have to stretch that far, Jack remembered an old woman he’d met in passing. A grandmotherly alien of a race that humanity would not meet for at least another thousand years. She’d been no-one special really, just an old lady he’d sat next to on a transport, mumbling to herself and sharing her home-made cakes with anyone in reach. He’d been so much younger then, older than a child but nowhere near being a man. His mother’s teachings about manners had kept his mouth shut and his mockery tight inside his head, but he still remembered one thing the old woman had said.

She’d turned, looked him in the eye and said. “There can be no birth without blood. No new beginnings without pain.”

He couldn’t recall his own reaction to that, but four years ago the words had oddly come back to him as he’d looked down at the bodies of his teammates, murdered by one they trusted.

For one hundred and thirty years (give or take a few decades where he’d managed to slip out from Torchwood’s clutches) he’d lived and worked here. For one hundred and thirty years he’d bitten back bile and revulsion and stamped on the voice inside his head that objected to the ignorant hatred and arrogant presumptions of his so called superiors. He’d made his own mistakes of course, had his own regrets, fallen foul of his own arrogance on more than one occasion, but inside, deep inside where the voice lived, he’d known from the very first day that this place, that Torchwood, was wrong. Not in what it was trying to do, but in the way it went about it.

He’d thought himself powerless. Held over a barrel. Condemned by the deal he’d signed with the devil back in the late 1800’s. He’d been wrong. It had taken the slaughter of his colleagues and the memory of those words by an old woman to make him realise.

She’d been right. There could be no birth without blood. Could be no new beginnings without pain. But out of the ashes of blood and pain there had been a birth, or at least a rebirth. He’d done what he’d never found the nerve to do before. He’d stood up. He’d stood his ground. He’d taken control of Torchwood Three, and although there were still battles to be fought and the war was far from over, so far he was winning.

He’d built his own team. Built his own Torchwood, and ran it by his own rules. He’d seen off the stooges of Torchwood One on more than one occasion. The other offices left him alone, but didn’t labour under the false sense of superiority that One did. So he’d fought tooth and nail to protect what he was trying to achieve and One hated it, hated him. But when hadn’t they hated him?

They had good reason to. Their misguided purpose was at odds with his own. The Doctor. If there was one person in the universe One despised it was _him_. _He_ also just happened to be the one person in the universe Jack Harkness believed in absolutely. It was in accordance to the ideals The Doctor and Rose had taught him - it was in their honour - that he’d reshaped Torchwood Cardiff. They’d changed him, shown him something, made him listen to the voice for the first time in too long, and when Torchwood Three had crashed and burned on millennium eve, he’d been able to do what he’d wanted to do for so long.

Now Three was back. He’d found people. Good people. People who hadn’t been touched by One’s lies. Who hadn’t been corrupted and left hollow by the sheer inhumanity of One’s methods. They were broken people though. Fringe people. Like he was. Touched by darkness and pain. They all had their stories. They’d all suffered as a result of their first brushes of what lay beyond the protective confines of the solar system. But they were decent people on the inside, and he hoped they could find some of what he had in Rose and the Doctor, in what they were doing here. Redemption. Purpose. Reason. He certainly wasn’t the same man he’d been back when he’d first met them; he wasn’t the con-man, the selfish and opportunistic deceiver he had once been. He’d stolen Captain Jack Harkness’ name and identity to pull off a scam for financial gain, but perhaps now the man whose life he’d slipped into would be proud of what his name had become.  
Jack was certainly starting to feel that pride in himself and he was beyond proud of the small team he was watching now.

Suzie Costello, Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. In no other way would these three have ever been brought together, and at times it showed.

Like now.

The hub was filled with raised voices. Angry voices. Two voices. Owen and Suzie were at it again, and caught between them was dear sweet Tosh, too quiet and too desperate not to be noticed to be able to get away. It wasn’t that Suzie and Owen meant her to feel discomfort, Jack was pretty sure of that, it was just that they were both incredibly passionate people, and quite vehement in their opinions.

As Jack watched, Tosh sank lower and lower in her chair at her terminal, the raging argument between the two senior team members getting louder and more heated above her head. Jack was about to call out, call a halt to the discussion before Tosh completely crawled under her desk, when an alert sounded across the hub, effectively cutting through every other sound in the room.

“Rift activity.” Tosh announced, sliding back up in her seat, unaware that her actions made her team-mates take a step back from where they’d been crowding over her, pointedly looking at the screen rather than each other.

Having slipped quickly into his office to grab his coat, Jack started along the gantry towards the stairs calling out instructions as he went.

The team mobilised. Not the height of clinical efficiency, like some scene from a movie or American cop show, but with enough surety that it would be obvious to anyone watching that they knew what they were doing. It made him smile. Made him proud.

It didn’t matter what they were going out to find. Four years and finally things were coming together.

~TWTWTWTW~

The young man stared down at the words carved into smooth stone. Someone had been here fairly recently. There were dried out flowers leant against the grave-stone, next to the fresh bundle he’d just placed down.

He’d come here a lot once. It seemed like a long time ago now, although really it was only a few years. Things had changed since then. He’d come here a lot once; for answers, trying to find some kind of hope or guidance. He’d come for the comfort he hadn’t been able to get elsewhere and hadn’t realised then could never be found on the damp ground surrounded by cold stone.

She’d been gone such a long time. He could only barely remember her now. He knew her face, could sometimes remember her voice but he couldn’t really remember _her_. Not the way he wanted to.

He was old enough to know now that she hadn’t left on purpose. She hadn’t left _him_ on purpose. Life was just cruel like that sometimes. Still she’d died, and everything had changed. It was different now though. He had something he hadn’t really had before.

Hope. Promise. A chance at a real life and a real future.

Just not here.

He’d come to say goodbye. Say his last farewells to all that had come before, so he could step into his future without it hanging over him. He hoped she’d understand. He was pretty sure she would.

With a small pained smile, the young man brushed his fingers one last time over the letters of her name and then stood, straightening his neatly ironed T-shirt as he stepped back onto the path and towards his bright and happy future.

That was when he saw the light. Saw the golden glow like the very air was on fire. He could only stare as the world tore in front of him. And then the lightning came.

~TWTWTWTW~

Jack wasn’t the biggest fan of cemeteries. He wasn’t the biggest fan of rift alerts in bright daylight under clear skies either. Everything was just a bit too harshly real in daylight. Especially when they arrived too late.

The cemetery looked like a bomb site. Or more precisely, like it had been the epicentre of a gigantic thunderstorm, condensed down into a tight ball. Perfect pristinely kept graves all around, and then splat, an area about five metres in diameter completely decimated. Grave-stones shattered or flattened, trees splintered and felled. A bench in fragments. There were scorch marks everywhere – like lightning strikes, broken vases, bits of debris, and few inches from his foot, just inside the blackened blast area, a teddy-bear lay smouldering. That wasn’t what made his stomach clench though.

No that was the body Tosh and Owen currently crouched over. They’d brushed past him just moments before, having run back to the SUV for their hazmat suits. Tosh had picked up some unusual readings as they’d approached the blast zone, and it was only wise to use caution entering the unknown.

Hazmat suits or not, Jack didn’t know why they were hurrying. There was no way anyone could have survived in the middle of all this. Especially given those readings Tosh had been picking up on her PDA. Rift Energy, radiation, other strange patterns, spikes and fluxes that were way off the scale. He couldn’t say he’d ever seen readings like it, so he wasn’t surprised when no-one else knew what the hell it was, or had been, that had ripped through this place.

As he watched, Jack began to frown. Tosh and Owen weren’t looking over the body like they were investigating a corpse. No, they were working with the body like the poor guy was...

Just as the thought trickled through the immortal’s mind, Owen tore back the hood of his Hazmat suit and yelled. “He’s still alive!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Cardiff, July 2004**

 

The Hub. Jack couldn’t remember when it had been given that name. Sometime between the two world wars he was sure. He’d managed to get away a lot during those times. If he wanted to go off and fight for King and Country the excessively patriotic suits that he’d worked for sure weren’t going to stop him. Better him than someone important. Besides, he’d had to avoid himself and the real Jack Harkness in the 1940’s and being over-seas was a great way to do that.

It was at some point in that period of time that Torchwood Cardiff had expanded, that the underground rail link between all the Torchwood bases had been proposed, started and then shelved. It had been too difficult, too costly and thanks to extensive bombing, too obvious. The warehouse that they had once used had been badly damaged, and it had made sense to shift operations into the half finished station and the labyrinth of tunnels that had already been built below. The warehouse above had gone back to being a warehouse, and had been a great cover for some of the more conspicuous events of the last sixty years, however the decline of the docks had made a well maintained building too obvious and it had been left to crumble. The land above was eventually sold, sold and resold. Torchwood had of course carefully steered and sabotaged prospective projects for the land, keeping what lay below protected, even going so far as to completely derail efforts to build an opera house on the site. Eventually though, Torchwood had found its solution. The Oval basin it was originally called, and Torchwood even coughed up most of the money for it, although the Millennium Commission and the Welsh assembly took the credit.

Torchwood was still coughing up money for projects in the area; the Assembly building which was due for completion in another two years, and the Wales Millennium Centre which would open in November. Jack was rather proud of that. If Torchwood One noticed what he was doing, or how he was doing it, so far he’d had no comeback and as far as Jack was concerned it was about time Torchwood gave back a little to the people of Cardiff. After all, they’d stalled every major hope the city had had for revival for nearly thirty years. Jack knew all too well One’s interest in Cardiff, and knew for a fact they would quite happily see the whole city die out, just so they could get their hands on the rift. Jack had no intention of letting that happen.

So while the Plaza above, now called Roald Dahl Plass, was the centre of Cardiff Bay’s new hope, down below with its tangled mix of Victorian brick, 1920’s and 30’s tile, sixties concrete, 80’s steel, 90’s furniture, and technology dating from the earliest days to the far flung future, the Hub rumbled on. Home sweet home for Torchwood Three.

It was designed to deal with a lot, this amalgam of eras and technologies they called home, but the one thing the Hub wasn’t, was a hospital. There were actual _Hospitals_ for that. They had a medical bay of a sort, but the amount of actual healing achievable in the white tiled pit was only what could be achieved with someone _sitting_ on the autopsy table. The fact that it had an autopsy table rather than a bed was the biggest clue to the fact that it was rather more equipped to deal with the dead than the living.

That was why Captain Jack Harkness currently stood outside a sturdy lead lined door, his gaze fixed through the leaded Georgian wire-glass window into what had once been just another room amongst the many that sprouted off the maze of underground tunnels. Now it was a makeshift hospital room, complete with monitors, bed, the apparently pre-requite assembly of tubes, wires and things that went beep that were part and parcel of 21st century medicine, and last but by no means least, a patient.

The man from the cemetery. The mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a deliciously tight T-shirt. Or at least he had been until he’d been put in one of the white gowns they placed human bodies in before they went into storage.

Through the bruising on the man’s face, Jack could see he was young. Barely more than a kid really. And hansom. His features weren’t striking, but there was just something about the planes of the young man’s face that Jack hadn’t failed to notice.

It was a pity really, that he had ended up here. It was a pity that he could very well cost Jack one of his team. More than a pity.

To say Jack was furious with Owen would be an understatement. As he watched the doctor through the glass, the younger man busying himself around the room, Jack cursed the burden of secrecy he laboured under. Cursed his own foolishness. Cursed the seal that surrounded the door.

Not for the first time since he’d watched powerless to speak up in time in the cemetery, Jack cursed Owen Harper for removing the hood of his suit. He should have known better. He did know better.

Maybe it had been shock. Shock at finding what should have been a body still breathing and apparently unharmed other than being unconscious and bruised. Maybe it was just pure impulsive idiocy. Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to know either way.

It didn’t really matter in the end did it? Owen had taken his hood off, and as result exposed himself. To what exactly he’d exposed himself none of them were sure, but he’d been exposed. The anomalous readings Tosh had been picking up in the cemetery had centred around the young man now lying on the bed. They were like nothing any of them had ever seen, and way beyond anything they could understand. Was it energy? Was it radiation? Was it a life form? They had no idea what had come through or how it had caused the damage they’d seen. Had it brought some kind of illness with it? Alien viruses, bacteria or micro-organism? Had the young man in the bed been what had come through? Or had he just been an innocent bystander? Had he been attacked by some kind of weapon none of them had ever seen or heard of?

They had no answers to any of these questions; the readings had totally overwhelmed their equipment, blinding the highly sophisticated mix of future and alien technology to all but what Tosh had started calling ‘The Pattern’. Even the medical equipment. It sat in the room silent and useless, fried by their attempts to attach it to the young man on the bed.

He’d known from the start that they couldn’t just leave the boy in the hands of a civilian hospital. He was too much of a contamination risk for a start, and until they had any idea what they were dealing with their work was all about containment and protecting the public. Even if the young man wasn’t a contamination risk – something which Jack fervently hoped for Owen’s sake – then there was still the fact that whatever ‘The Pattern’ was it would fry, melt or explode any piece of equipment any hospital tried to hook him up to. Not suspicious at all.

They were going to have to quarantine Owen anyway, so why the hell not let the doctor tend his patient rather than stick him in cold storage until they could figure it out? It made sense, but that didn’t stop Jack from feeling the headache the whole situation was causing pounding behind his temples.

Raising his hand to his earpiece, he activated it. “Tosh, you get that vid link to the room set up yet?”

“All done.” Tosh’s voice came through the earpiece, a worried edge to her usually soothing tone.

“Good. Conference room, everyone. Five minutes. Owen?”

“I heard.” The far less soothing, and definitely unimpressed voice of Owen Harper answered. “I’ve already got the com on.”

Jack didn’t bother to reply, although part of his mind rebelled feebly at letting Owen’s choice of words pass by uncommented on. He wasn’t in the mood for it, and although under normal circumstances Jack wouldn’t actually let that stop him, it was clear Owen wasn’t in the mood for it either.

The irritation had been clear in the other man’s tone, but as afar as Jack was concerned, Owen could be as annoyed with him as he liked. Hewasn’t going to risk his team, the city or possibly the world for the young medic’s foolishness. Besides, Owen wasn’t really annoyed at Jack for confining him and the Captain knew it. Owen might be reckless but he was still a doctor; he understood all too well the risks. No, Owen was annoyed with himself and maybe a little scared. And if being grumpy with Jack made Owen feel better about the precarious situation his own stupidity had put him in, then Jack could deal with it, for now.

Five minutes later and as directed Tosh and Suzie were in the conference room, both looking harassed, frustrated and worried. Owen’s face seemed unusually large on the big screen mounted on the wall at the far end, his fatigue more than obvious. It seemed like weeks ago Jack had watched the doctor and Suzie bickering, but in reality it had only been a few hours.

“So, give me something.” Jack ordered as he strolled through the door, coming to stand where he could be seen by both Tosh and Suzie, and also by the camera feeding the terminal that had been set up for Owen.

“No luck so far indentifying the energy pattern I’m afraid.” Tosh admitted a little nervously, fidgeting in her seat as all eyes in the room turned to her, her eyes flicking to Suzie with something like desperation.

With a smile, the darker-skinned woman picked up the thread. “I can’t say for certain, but I think we can rule out some kind of weapon. It too fluid, too erratic. None of the samples we brought back from the site show any kind damage beyond superficial scorching. No molecular agitation or loss of cohesion. If it is a weapon, I can’t see what it’s supposed to do.”

“Same thing down here.” Owen broke in. “He’s got, I wouldn’t even call it a burn really. There’s a few patches of skin that look a bit like mild localised sunburn, or like he’s leant against a hot radiator. They’re already fading. No symptoms of radiation poisoning, at least of a kind I can identify.”

“What about his vital signs?” Suzie asked curiously. “Are they still stable?”

Owen shrugged, “His heart rate fluctuates, I’ve taken to taking his pulse every ten minutes or so. Never same result twice, but nothing dangerous. Other than the fact he’s out cold, sleeping beauty here is probably healthier than I am.”

“So we have nothing?” Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What about contamination? We know this guy is leaking off some kind of energy, there’s a few hundred pounds worth of smoking medical equipment downstairs to prove it. So is this... pattern transferable? Is it dangerous? Have we been able to tell if it’s brought anything else with it?”

“No idea.” Tosh shook her head. “We’ve used the most advanced equipment we have and... nothing can read through it. If there are any potentially life threatening mico-organisms or viruses, the system would usually pick them up instantly, simply because it doesn’t recognise them, but the best I can tell is that our guest is completely saturated with whatever this energy pattern is and because of that, we can’t read much of anything else in the entire building.”

“Are you saying this pattern is spreading through the hub?” Jack frowned worriedly.

“Yes and no.” Tosh sighed, again glancing at Suzie who shrugged. “In a way The Pattern works like radiation, from a single fixed point it is... well radiating. But it is a form of energy, only it’s not transferring. It’s just... there, in the background. The closer to it we try to look, the more it interferes. Up here it’s barely even a bit of noise on the scanners, down in the quarantine room it’s like trying to hear a moth’s wings beating in a crowded pub.”

“Nice analogy,” Jack praised, his expression letting Toshiko know the praise was meant for her work as much as her descriptive language. In response, the petite Japanese woman smiled shyly and ducked her head.

“As wonderful as that sounds,” Owen cut in with an audible eye-roll. “What it really means is I’m stuck in here until you lot can work out a way to see what’s actually going on.” Owen paused briefly, then his shoulders sagged slightly. “Even if you could see, it’s too soon to tell if there’s any risk. For all we know whatever is happening here could manifest over a period of days rather than hours.”

“Agreed.” Jack nodded sharply. “So Owen remains in quarantine until we can find a way to know one way or another.”

“Well I have my riveting companion here, shouldn’t be too much of an imposition.” Owen threw in with more than a little sarcasm.

“Tosh, keep working on finding a way to see through this thing.” Jack began to give out orders, Toshiko nodding in acceptance. “Suzie, I know this isn’t exactly your field, but help Tosh any way you can on this one. I’m going to head down to the archives, see if I can find something we might have come across in the past that can help us.”

“Jack.” Suzie stopped the captain as he moved to turn. Sliding a file across the desk, she rose from her seat. “There’s still a lot of background checking to do, but that’s the preliminaries on the ID. I checked the drivers licence we found in his wallet, it’s legitimate.”

Jack nodded in acceptance, picking up the file and flicking it open as Tosh and Suzie rose from their seats to leave, and Owen vanished from the screen. There was a scan of the aforementioned driving licence accompanied by a couple of photographs, clipped to the single sheet of paper. Scanning the file, Jack shook his head. “Welcome to Torchwood, Ianto Jones.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Cardiff, July 2004**

_Quarantine Day 2:_

Owen tried not to smirk as Suzie clumped around the room in her hazmat suit, helping to set up the equipment he'd requested. Well trying to help, there was only so much she could do with her hands encased in thick gloves and her movements hindered by cumbersome plastic.

"Good look for you this Suze. Never knew you had a kinky side." He smirked, the expression turning to a grin when she attempted to flip him off but failed when her fingers wouldn't bend properly.

Seeing the humour herself, Suzie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Sod off Harper."

"Wish I could, but you see I'm kinda stuck here with my new friend Mr. Jones. Delightful company." Owen replied with a snort of amusement and a nod in the direction of the patient on the bed. “So many interesting stories, I could just listen to him all day.”

“Good thing you don’t have much choice in the matter then isn’t it?” Suzie shot back gleefully.

“You’re loving this aren’t you?” Owen sighed with a shake of his head.

“What? Me?” Suzie’s eyes widened in feigned disbelief and hurt, “I would never enjoy the discomfort of one of my team-mates. Whatever gave you that idea?”

Again Owen shook his head, returning his focus to the young man laid prone on the bed between them. They had no idea how long he’d be out - Hell they had no idea why he was unconscious in the first place – so Owen had decided it was best to err on the side of caution. He seemed to be breathing fine on his own, so the respirator was just in case, but the other stuff was going to be necessary; just a few basics while their guest snoozed away his visit.

It felt good really. Looking after a living patient after so long performing autopsies on the weird and wacky creatures that fell through the rift. How long had it been now since he’d been in this position? A year? More? Not much more. Had he really just forgotten?

The levity Owen felt earlier suddenly vanished and the weight that always seemed to be crushing his chest returned with a vengeance. Sometimes he hated memory. Really hated it. A snort of sardonic laughter escaped him as a random thought drifted through his mind. Alien parasites, infections and diseases. Larvae growing in human brains. He’d seen that. Seen that before he even knew Torchwood existed. He, better than anyone knew the risk to health alien life-forms could pose. But he’d still managed to fuck up and remove his hazmat hood in a potentially hazardous environment. If he wound up infected with something it would be just what he bloody deserved.

“Owen? You alright?”

Owen shook his head again and looked up, meeting Suzie’s concerned gaze. For all her acerbic exterior, Suzie’s heart was in the right place.

“What? Yeah. It’s nothing. Go on. Get out of here, it’s just tubes and shit now, literally. Give the poor sod his dignity and piss off while I do this. And keep Harkness away from the bloody CCTV while you’re at it. Kinky fucker would probably enjoy the view.”

“You’re still convinced he’s gay?” Suzie laughed as she stepped back from the bed.

“My life savings on it.”

~Tw~wT~

_Quarantine Day 3_.

“Has he started talking to himself yet?”

Toshiko nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice suddenly close to her ear. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, but then if Jack didn’t want to be heard, he wouldn’t be. She didn’t need to turn to know who it was; she’d know that voice anywhere. That smooth American accent, not as harsh or twanging as some she’d heard. The practically permanent purr. Then there was something about the way Jack smelled.

Not that she’d been sniffing her boss. Because she hadn’t. It suddenly occurred to Tosh how many times Jack seemed to be able to read peoples’ minds and she prayed fervently he hadn’t just read hers because that was just mortifying. Now totally flustered, she flicked her eyes to the side and there Jack was; his chin almost on her shoulder as he stared at the screen that she was now even more embarrassed to realize she’d been staring at for nearly an hour.

“He... uh... I think he might have been muttering to himself earlier.” She managed to stumble out, desperate for something to say.

Jack smirked. A truly wicked smirk. “Keep an eye on him. If he winds up in the clear, I want every embarrassing little slip he makes.”

“And if he isn’t clear?” Tosh found herself asking, her stomach in knots. The idea of Owen contracting some weird alien disease or being somehow adversely affected by The Pattern was not a pleasant thought.

Apparently it wasn’t for Jack either, as his face, so full of amusement just seconds before, suddenly closed down. “We’ll figure something out.”

Dragging her eyes from the screen showing the CCTV footage of the quarantine room and back to what she’d been working on, Tosh sighed.

Jack didn’t miss it. “Anything?”

Tosh shook her head. “I’ve been trying to find a way to get the system to filter out the interference from The Pattern but nothing I’ve tried so far has worked. I’m running out of ideas.”

A hand came to rest on Tosh’s shoulder, and she felt instantly calmer. “You’ll figure it out Tosh. You always do.”

Jack trusted her, believed in her, and had done so when everyone else on the planet had abandoned her. Now he was trusting her to find a way to help Owen and the young man, Ianto, who they’d found. This meant a lot to Jack, she could tell. She would not let him down.

~Tw~wT~

_Quarantine Day 5._

Owen was going mad. Barmy, loopy, round the twist, totally bat-shit crazy.

Four days. He’d been stuck in this tiny little room with only an even tinier bathroom for a change of scenery for four days. The institutional green walls were actually beginning to do strange things to his head, he was sure of it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d had something challenging or time consuming to keep his mind occupied; lord knew he’d spent far longer locked away in his far smaller digs while at medical school. But back then he’d had his head buried so deep in medical texts and lecture notes he’d lost track of weeks let alone days. In this room, in the here and now, all he had to keep him busy was Mr. Sociable on the bed, a few books Tosh had brought him, his game-boy and a few random conversations whenever someone upstairs remembered to talk to him.

Even then the times he talked to Jack or Suzie were always brief and strictly business, although Jack did always start by asking how he was doing. No, in terms of general conversation, his life-line the last four days had been Tosh. Filling him in on the outside world, keeping a com open throughout the working day while she was at her station so they could just communicate; small idle comments like they were actually sitting next to each as they would have been normally.

She didn’t say much, but that was a hell of a lot better than nothing. And it took his mind off the fact that he felt about as useful as a custard cricket ball stuck in this room. There wasn’t really anything he could do for his patient except keep him comfortable.

Looking down at the man on the bed, Owen was suddenly struck by one overwhelming conclusion. He missed nurses. Not for the reason most people would assume though. No he missed them doing their jobs. He hadn’t had to do half the disgusting ‘maintenance’ tasks he’d done in the last five days since he’d been in medical school, and even then he and his fellow students had only needed to know how the jobs were done. No one expected them to actually do them beyond the one or two occassions they had to demonstrate their knowledge. As stuck up and conceited as it sounded, such things were generally considered beneath a doctor’s time.

Not a doctor working for Torchwood. Oh no, he had to do autopsies on slimy aliens and look after their unconscious guest’s daily needs. What fun.

At least, he supposed, it gave him something to do.

There actually was a limit to the amount of time a grown man could spend playing a game-boy.

~Tw~wT~

_Quarantine Day 8_

“Owen?”

“Unless you’re about to tell me I can finally get out of this place, I suggest you fuck off.”

Suzie Costello snorted with laughter she couldn’t quite contain as she peered at the rather bedraggled face of her colleague. Owen hadn’t bothered shaving since his third day in quarantine, and the bearded look really didn’t suit him. Neither did the bags around his eyes, or the paleness of his skin.

“Not enjoying your little holiday from real work then?”

On the screen, Owen’s face scowled back at her. It was a decidedly unimpressed expression, but it wasn’t, in all honesty, all that far removed from the expression he’d already been wearing. A contained Owen Harper was not a pretty thing. Suzie had to admit, however, that she did get a bit of a kick out of seeing his predicament. Especially with what she now knew. No harm dragging it out a bit.

“Oh go fuck yourself Suzie.” Owen growled after a moment of silence.

“Owen wait.” Suzie called out as Owen turned away from the camera. When Owen turned back, she sighed and gave him a little smile. “Tosh has been monitoring the pattern...”

“I know that.” Owen snapped out, cutting her off.

Casting Owen a cautioning glare, Suzie continued. “As I was saying. Tosh has been monitoring the pattern, and according to her readings, the energy signature has dissipated somewhat in the last twenty four hours.”

“Meaning...?” Owen growled impatiently.

“Meaning, give us ten minutes and we’ll be able to do an in depth scan.” Now Suzie smiled properly.

“About fucking time!”

~Tw~wT~

Jack stared down at the piece of tech Tosh had put into his hands. It was a modified PDA, although it looked less like something that had been modified, and more like something grown by a cybernetic alien life form. Tosh could be scary sometimes with the things she created.

In his gloved hands it felt fiddly, delicate and fragile. Thankfully all he would have to do was wave it around a bit, Tosh and Suzie would be monitoring what it was picking up back in the main hub. Not that Tosh had wanted to stay in the main hub of course. She’d wanted to come down with him, but Jack had insisted. If they were wrong, if something went wrong, he didn’t want either Tosh or Suzie down here. It was bad enough that Owen was down here and that he’d sent Suzie down to help him at the start. He’d been careless, complacent. The last eight days and their lack of progress had given Jack a lot of time to think about it. Too much time. His worries had burrowed into his skull like a Tarsian ear worm, making him tense and agitated. He’d built his team with every intention of keeping them as safe as he could; Owen didn’t deserve to die of his own stupidity and Suzie certainly didn’t deserve to die for Jack’s.

“Jack?”

Jack felt his lips twitch at Tosh’s voice over his ear piece. Nervous but excited, full of anticipation and worry at the same time. He could relate. “I’m here. Is this thing working yet?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, filled only with the sound of tapping keys. “It’s functioning, but we won’t know how well it’ll work until you get close to Mr. Jones.”

Jack nodded to himself. He knew that. “OK then. Well here goes nothing. Keep me posted.”

With that said, Jack shifted the device to his other hand and reached out to tap the keypad of the locking mechanism on the sealed door. The gloves of his Hazmat suit made it difficult to hit the keys dead on, and he found yet another reason to hate the damn suit other than, one – not needing it, and two – it being bright garish yellow. Yellow really wasn’t his colour.

At the third attempt the door hissed, the seal deactivating. It was heavy, but didn’t take much effort to push open, nor to close behind him. Satisfied when he heard the hiss again telling him the seal was back in action, Jack turned to face the corridor. It was the best they’d been able to do really. Seal off both ends of the corridor and put another seal on the door to the room where they’d put Ianto Jones, creating in principal if not in appearance, an air lock. On his return, if this didn’t go as they all hoped, then once he left the quarantine room, this corridor would be flooded with a mixture of gasses and various forms of radiation, which should, in principal, kill off any organic material in the air or clinging to the outside of his suit. They’d all been thoroughly scanned when they’d returned to the hub after finding their visitor, and each time they’d been down to quarantine, and none of them seemed to show the same kind of energy saturation that Tosh had originally picked up on Mr. Jones. Still, they’d all taken pains not to touch him, so there was no telling if it was transferable by contact.

The corridor wasn’t long, and then once more he was stood outside the lead lined door peering in through the glass. Ianto was as Jack had last seen him, laid out on the bed, still other than the soft rise and fall of his chest. Owen by complete contrast was pacing like a caged lion, chewing on his thumbnail and if Jack wasn’t mistaken, muttering to himself. Isolation could do that to a person.

Another keypad, but this time he got the code first time. Another hiss, and with a grunt of effort Jack pushed the large sliding door out of the way.

“About bloody time Harkness!” Owen snapped before Jack had even made a step into the room. “So come on! Scan me and get me out of this pit.”

“Owen.” Jack cut in firmly.

Owen just glared back. Challenging. Defying Jack to say what he had been about to. Letting Jack know with expression alone that the doctor did not need to be told the results of the scan might not be what he wanted to hear, and that he might not be getting out at all.

“We good to go Tosh?” Jack asked keeping eye contact with Owen.

“Yep.” Tosh replied quickly. “Scanner is active.”

“Ok then. Let’s do this.” Jack grinned. “Arms up and let’s have a look at you.”

Owen just kept on scowling, but did as asked, raising his arms to hold them out to the sides.

Jack raised the scanner and walked closer, and was just about to do the first sweep as Tosh had instructed him when a high pitched screech pierced his skull, crackling through his earpiece and almost dropping him to his knees with its intensity. On the other end of the line he vaguely heard Tosh yelp. He stumbled back a step, and just as quickly as it had come, the noise stopped.

“Bloody hell! What the fuck was that!” Owen cursed, straightening himself out and rubbing his head.

Jack groaned, his ears ringing. “Tosh! Report”

“Some kind of feedback.” Tosh instantly shot back. “The filter was overwhelmed. You need to move further away from the source.”

Jack frowned in confusion. “The source?”

“The bed Jack! Mr. Jones is the source of The Pattern. You need to get further away from him.”

Further away? The room wasn’t exactly large. Then Jack spotted something behind Owen’s shoulder.

“Jack?” Owen asked with wary caution. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw exactly what Jack had seen and glared. “One comment Harkness. One comment about getting me alone in a bathroom and I swear I will knock your fucking teeth out.”

Raising his hands in a pacifying gesture, Jack grinned. “Never even crossed my mind.”

“Yeah right.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Cardiff, September 2004**

Dr Owen Harper glanced at his watch, huffed and slid open the heavy door; the rattle of the track scraping harshly in the constant quiet of the lower levels. Pale light spilled out into the concrete corridor from the room beyond as he stepped over the threshold, impatient to be done. 

It had been a long week, and the last thing he wanted was to be hanging around the creep factory. He wanted to be out. He wanted to get drunk, get laid, and hopefully, rift permitting, actually get a few decent hours sleep. Suzie had already gone home, and even Tosh had been packing up when he’d left the central hub. As far as Owen could work out Jack lived in the bunker underneath his office, so he technically couldn’t _go home_ , but he’d retreated to his office an hour ago with a definite ‘as off duty as I ever am’ vibe. 

It had to be a sign of an impending apocalypse that _he_ , _Owen Harper_ , was the last one working on a Friday night.

9:06. This was cutting into his drinking and pulling time. Striding over to the computer terminal, he clicked a few keys and scanned over the information on the screen. As they had been since Owen had been given the all clear, Ianto Jones’ vitals remained stable and well within normal limits. 

It was a daily ritual. Part of the routine now. Arrive at work, go down and check on Mr Jones. Have lunch, go down and check on Mr Jones. Get ready to go home, go down and check on Mr Jones. There was a part of Owen, the part that had made him work so hard to become a doctor in the first place, that actually welcomed it. It wasn’t much, but at least he was _caring_ for someone again. And Owen couldn’t say Ianto was a difficult patient. 

Quite the contrary. He was the perfect patient. Co-operative, quiet, calm and undemanding. Except that he wouldn’t bloody wake up. There was no reason, no physiological reason that Owen could find for the young man’s continued lack of consciousness. It was infuriating and frustrating, not to mention damaging to his ego. A week after he’d been released from quarantine - having completed every test he could think of, and many of them more than once - Owen had been forced to admit to the rest of the team during their weekly briefing that he was completely and utterly at a loss. 

The only saving grace was that the others hadn’t fared much better. The ongoing mystery of Mr Jones had stumped them all and once it was clear the young man wasn’t in immediate danger, it had been put on something of a back burner. Suzie had lost interest in the whole thing when she’d decided what they weren’t dealing with some kind of weapon or useable tech. Tosh regularly kept tabs on ‘The Pattern’ which had ceased to blow up medical equipment not long after Owen had been let out and had stopped being detectable anywhere other than within Ianto and the space immediately around him after three weeks. And Jack… Owen hadn’t realised that their leader thought about his patient much at all until a couple of days ago, when he’d raised the topic again in their briefing. 

“Well then Mr Jones, let’s get you sorted for the night shall we. Sorry still no nurses so you’ll have to put up with me.” Owen began to ramble as he worked without really thinking about it. It just seemed uncomfortable to be manhandling a man who was, for all intents and purposes sleeping, without somehow interacting with him. “You know, you wouldn’t have to put up with me at all if you woke up. You could do this for yourself. Or you might not need to deal with any of this at all. Just a thought. You should probably think about it.” 

Owen paused, and then sighed. “I’m gonna level with you mate. You’re running out of time down here. Jack’s not convinced you’re ever going to wake up. He’s talking about long term storage. Alien cryogenics. Freeze you, stick you in a box and lock you in the vaults until someone has the time or the inclination to work out what’s wrong with you. Wouldn’t fancy that myself. Going to sleep one day, waking up a hundred years in the future or something. Out of time, out of place. Nobody left. Gotta be someone out there you’d miss, bet some-one’s missing you…”

Owen trailed off feeling a pang of guilt and pity. Five weeks. Five weeks Ianto Jones had been asleep in the lower levels of the hub, and so far, no-one had reported him missing. That was just… _sad_. Shaking his head, Owen finished up what he needed to do in silence. He needed to get out of here. It was depressing. 

Perhaps Jack was right. Perhaps Long term storage was the best option. The doctor in him railed at that, but the human being, the cynical, jaded, wounded human being couldn’t help but agree with the logic that this was a waste of time, energy and resources. 

With Ianto tucked back in under the blankets, Owen turned away from his patient and strode out of the door, rolling it carelessly shut behind him. 

Drink. Shag. Sleep. Time to have a life for a change.

~Tw~wT~

The man on the bed did not bolt to wakefulness with a gasp and an impressive display of abdominal strength. Nor did he softly rise through nebulous clouds to the great waking world with fluttering eyelids and soft sighs. 

No. His nose twitched. The bridge wrinkled and a faint frown creased the brow above. Lower down, fingers made tiny jerking movements. Subtle tiny spasms ran down limbs. The brow furrowed further, eyes creasing at the corners. A soft groan escaped from between parted lips, the sound faint and hoarse. His breath became less regular, deeper and all too soon a cough tickled its way up the inside of his throat making his whole body jolt. 

Ianto Jones opened his eyes. 

And just as quickly shut them again, another dry groan escaping him. He hurt. His head was pounding. His nose was itching like crazy. Unconsciously, he tried to lift his hand to scratch it, but the limb wouldn’t obey. It was heavy, and a screeching pain lanced up it making him hiss and jarring him into wakefulness. 

A cascade of thoughts tumbled through his mind at that moment, the first of which being to wonder what the hell it was he’d been drinking the night before. He hadn’t felt this rough since... well since first year certainly. The individual instances of brain melting hangovers during his first year of university were all a little mashed together, but he certainly hadn’t been this bad off since. His mouth felt like something had crawled into it and died. 

Now he was awake, he could see the red behind his closed eyelids letting him know of the light beyond. Had he fallen asleep with the lights on? Or was it daylight and he hadn’t closed his curtains? Either way, even the dull red was making his head throb, and with some effort he raised a shaking arm to bring his hand to his face as he attempted to roll over. 

A sharp pain stopped him though. This was no muscle cramp, but a tugging fleshy pain that had his eyes snapping open despite the glare of light, and his other hand coming up to cradle the one that had been hurt. Shaking tentative fingers felt across the back of his hand. Felt across the strip of tape and the hard plastic tube sitting under his skin. They followed it along, finding where it left flesh, where it became soft and pliant. 

Even as his fingers found the tube, his eyes stared up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling above him. The odd off white paint, the institutional green of the top of the wall. 

That was a drip in his hand. Was he in hospital? It was so quiet. What had happened? He couldn’t remember. But he _could_ remember. He remembered the train journey to Cardiff, the smiling receptionist at the youth hostel. The awful cup of coffee he’d had as he’d explored the changes that had been made to the Cardiff Bay development. The Smell of the sea. He remembered being unsure what he thought of the Wales Millenium Centre’s design but liking the water tower at the far end of Roald Dahl Plass. He remembered the bus ride to the Cemetery. He remembered looking down at his mother’s grave. 

He could remember it all. His life here in Cardiff. He could remember his life before his mother become ill and the life that came after she died. He could remember school and University. What he couldn’t remember was meeting anyone he would have gone to a pub with. He never drank alone and certainly wouldn’t have got himself so drunk as would warrant this kind of hangover without some kind of reason. 

Tube in his hand. Hospital. He swallowed again, a tension building in the pit of his stomach as confusion washed over him. He turned his head to one side. There were machines beside him. Machines he recognised, and understood but strangely could not recall the names of. Colourful lines danced their way across the blackness of the screen he could see. A Constant stream of data being collected by the wires coming out of the machine and ending somewhere on him. He moved his head again, his eyes were settling, the light no longer painful. There was a single bulb with a metal conical down lighting shade hanging in the middle of the room. The walls were a dirty darkish green. There were boxes and crates. There was a very modern looking computer sitting on a desk in the far corner. 

This looked like no hospital he’d ever seen. 

Swallowing again, Ianto opened his mouth. “Hello?”

His voice was raspy, and so very quiet. The effort to make any noise at all brought out another few seconds of dry painful coughing. 

Once he’d stopped, he listened. Nothing. It was so quiet. He looked back at the machines in a momentary fit of panic; the sudden realisation that not even they were making noise sparking the onset of an irrational momentary belief that he was dead.

The lines continued to track their merry way. OK. So not dead. But alone, in a strange room, with medical equipment and no memory of how he got there. The lines on the screen reflected the way his heart suddenly started to thunder in his chest, making him more and more anxious as he watched them. 

“Hello?” He tried again, this time a little louder. A little more desperate. “Is anyone there? Hello?”

Nothing. His words seemed to echo back at him. His throat felt like closing up. His breath started coming in sharp panicked pants. 

Where was he? What happened to him? Where was everyone else? “Please! Somebody?”

He needed. He needed to do something. Needed to move. Needed to get out of here. He didn’t like hospitals at the best of times and this was like something out of a nightmare. Was it a nightmare? Was he dreaming? 

He tried to sit up, and his body screamed with pain, making him cry out. His limbs were so stiff he felt like he’d run a marathon. The back of his hand felt warm, wet. He looked down at it. Blood. He’d managed to turn the tube around in his skin and now it was torn, blood running down over the pristine white sheet.

Frantically he pulled at it. Pulled at the tape and the tube until it came free, then at the other things he could feel against his skin. Hooked up. Wired up. Tubes and wires. He wanted free. He wanted out. He pulled and yanked as best he could with hands that shook and arms that felt like they were wrapped in sheets of lead. He scratched at his face to pull the tube from his nose, choking and gagging on it, his eyes watering. He fought the sheets tucked around him, desperate hands clawing at the fabric until his lower body was exposed. He could feel more of himself now and there was something where it shouldn’t be. 

He was almost keening; frightened high pitch sounds escaping his throat as he found the source of the alien sensation. A tube. A damned tube running into his... 

Panic took over. He cried out as he pulled the last connection to the nightmarish bed free, feeling warm fluid trickle across his skin. He no longer cared if he’d damaged himself, he just wanted to get out.

But liberation brought new obstacles. Moving took more effort than it should. Was he drugged? He managed to swing his legs off the bed, but when he tried to make them take his weight they folded uselessly under him and his knees impacted with cold concrete tearing a frustrated, frightened sob from his throat. 

No. Calm down. Calm. He needed to be calm. He had to get out and he couldn’t get out if he fell apart. Deep breath. Deep breath. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, Ianto swallowed, took a deep breath and swallowed again, then and only then did he try to stand, carefully levering himself up using the edge of the bed. His legs felt like jelly. It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t dignified, but it had to be done. He bit back the whimpers that begged to be let loose; the shaking weakness as much frustrating as it was painful. 

Finally upright he turned around and surveyed the room again. A Door. It was large, filling almost half of the wall to his right, made of heavy pieces of timber with a square of dirty Georgian wire-glass above the centre lock rail. It wasn’t flush with the wall, but proud of it, a covered track near the ceiling and groove in the floor. A sliding door. 

Wincing, stumbling, braced on anything within arm’s reach, he headed for it, practically collapsing against it when he there. It looked heavy, but Ianto just wanted out. Wrapping both hands around the handle he pulled, a sob of relief and joy breaking free when it finally moved. He didn’t pause to think about the fact it wasn’t locked, just tumbled through the gap he’d made, thudding his shoulder into the opposite wall as he lost his balance. 

It was darker out here. The passageway was cast in deep shadows. Single bare bulbs sat behind wire grills high in the walls sparsely but regularly placed. The air was filled with the feel and scent of damp. The concrete had a wet gritty feel under his bare feet. Was he in some kind of basement? Maybe a bunker? It was definitely underground. 

Shuffling, leaning against the wall for support, he put one foot in front of the other. He was determined to keep putting one foot in front of the other until he was out; free from whatever this place was. Each door he met, he felt elation when it opened, and despair as more dark tunnel stretched out before him. How big was this place?

Lights flickered, the sound of water dripping rang in the emptiness. His feet made splatting sounds on the floor, and his shoulder dragged against the wall. He wanted to cry out, want to beg.

_‘Let me out. Please please let me out!’_

Stairs now. But up was good no matter how difficult it was. His fingers gripped the rail tight enough to turn his knuckles white, and he felt like his arms were having to do as much work as he legs. 

Dear lord help him he wasn’t going to make it. He was going to collapse right here on the dark stairs. Yet even as the thought came to him the stairs ran out and he was in a tunnel once more. There wasn’t much of it. It couldn’t have been more than a few feet but it felt like miles and there was a corner. A couple of steps up, and then another corner. The palms of his hands felt bruised and grazed, painful to lean on. 

Panting, hanging onto the wall, Ianto paused to take a breath, and that’s when he felt it. The air. It wasn’t so stale, it wasn’t so close. He’d been so focussed on his feet he hadn’t looked up in what felt like forever. Now he did and gasped. 

He was in some kind of chamber. It was huge. Industrial looking. Lights and steel and cables. A great tower in the middle and machines. What was this place? It looked like the lair of a James Bond villain. It was as breath-taking as it was terrifying. 

The little voice in the back of his head that had been nagging him that he was over-reacting, that he should have just stayed in his bed like a good boy and waited for a nurse or a doctor, the same voice that castigated him for watching too much science fiction and being ridiculous, abruptly shut up. 

Tentatively, driven by an impulse he couldn’t really explain, Ianto stepped out from the relative safety of the tunnel entrance and out into the vastness of the chamber, his eyes turned upwards instead of down at his feet. All he could do was stare. 

“So you’re awake.”

The voice out of nothing made Ianto start violently, and he was forced to grab a nearby railing as he turned sharply towards it, his heart in his mouth. There, standing on a raised gantry, was a man. He was leaning on the railing, hands clasped and weight on his forearms. His eyes were cast in shadow but Ianto could pick out angular features and dark hair. His tone had been serious, a dark edge to it that made Ianto nervous. 

If it was at all possible to feel any more nervous than he already was, and only if you replaced nervous with terrified. 

And yet, despite his fear he found himself talking. Found words leaving his mouth even as his brain screamed at him to shut up and run. “Who are you?”

The man pushed off from the railing, and putting his hands in his pockets, casually walked along the gantry towards the steps leading down. His boots clanked on the metal panels, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls of the cavernous space. 

Swallowing and taking a step back, Ianto tried to keep the man in sight. “Why am I here? What have you done to me?”

Much faster than Ianto would have liked, and seemingly at odds with the casual pace with which the man approached, he was there, stood in front of him. Ianto’s eyes burned, and he choked as fear overwhelmed all his limited bravado. “Stay back! Please don’t... please let me go...”

“I’m sorry.” The man whispered, pulling his hands free of his pockets and raising them in a pacifying gesture when Ianto took another clumsy step backwards at the action. “But I can’t do that.”

“You can’t...” Ianto’s voice caught and he coughed through the fluid building at the back of his throat. He blinked furiously but it didn’t help, he could feel the tears escaping. He tried to take another step back but he was so tired. “You can’t keep me here!”

The man opened his mouth to speak, but then a claxon sounded, so sudden and loud it made Ianto cry out and snap round, his legs finally giving out and dropping him into heap on the floor, one arm still hooked over the rail. 

“This better be important Jack, I was actually having some fun for a change!” A new voice called across the space. 

“Owen get your ass over here now!” The man shouted back, his face suddenly thunderous. 

“Why? What the...” As the man jogged into view around tower, he looked down at Ianto. “Oh Fuck.”

“You want to explain to me how he got out?” the first man, apparently called Jack, snapped back, his tone and words making Ianto whimper.

Ianto clutched the railing for dear life, his whole body shaking as he stared up at the two arguing men. Arguing over him. _Got out_. He wasn’t supposed to have been able to get out. Oh god. They wanted him locked up. Why? What did they want from him? Who were these people? “please... please let me go. Please...”

“What the hell have you done to him?”

“What have I done to him? Don’t you mean what have you done to him? You were the one who was supposed to make sure he was locked in to avoid this happening in the first place!”

Their voices, they sounded so far away. The two men, so angry, they were blurring. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. Oh god. They were killing him. They’d done something to him. He didn’t want to die. Not now. No please. Not now, not here. He had a future. A job interview lined up. New flat. Everything had been going right for a change. 

Ianto screwed his eyes closed for a second and when he opened them the first man, Jack, was right there, right in front him. So close. His eyes were blue. 

“No! Get away from me! Get away...!” 

Breathe. Breathe. He couldn’t breathe. 

“Jack give him some room for Christ’s sake... It’s alright mate, just calm down.”

No. No. No. No.

Ianto’s world greyed around the edges, swayed and went black. 

Tbc...


	6. Chapter 6

**Cardiff, September 2004**

Toshiko looked between Owen and Jack, before stepping closer to the man laid out on the autopsy table. She’d been down to the quarantine room a couple of times in the last few weeks and had been watching the CCTV feed of Ianto’s room, but this was actually the closest she’d been to the young man since they’d found him. He looked very different now. A heavy growth of beard on his face, his nails far too long. When she’d last been this close his face had been covered in mud and soot. 

Once more she looked over her shoulder at the two other men in the room. Owen was stood in the pit with her, Jack on the raised edge, looking down at her. They weren’t looking at each other. The tension in the room was practically twanging. Of course she knew why, she’d been bombarded with their argument the moment she’d stumbled through the door into the hub twenty minutes ago, having been called in four hours early by a less than well humoured Jack. 

From the sniping and bitching she’d managed to piece it together. Owen hadn’t bothered to close the door to the quarantine room properly, so the auto-lock hadn’t kicked in. The auto-lock _she’d_ installed for the express purpose of keeping their guest inside his room until they could get to him should he wake up. The thought behind that was that finding ones-self locked in a room would be less frightening and overwhelming than getting lost in the tunnels, or wondering blindly into the central hub. Granted there was some extremely dangerous, not to mention classified tech scattered all over their headquarters, so for Ianto’s safety she’d agreed with the plan, but she wasn’t convinced by the less frightening argument. She’d woken up in a locked room herself more mornings than she liked to remember, and each and every time had been almost soul-destroying. 

So Jack was annoyed with Owen for that, but Owen was annoyed at Jack for something else entirely. Apparently, although she couldn’t quite work out how, Jack had managed to miss the alerts they’d set up to sound if Ianto’s condition changed, and by the time he did notice and call Owen, Ianto was already out of his room and loose in the tunnels. 

“I still don’t understand why you need me. You said you sedated him.” Tosh asked, her hand unconsciously coming to rest on the Ianto’s shoulder. 

“Yeah well, we wouldn’t have needed you if captain intimidating over there hadn’t scared the living daylights out of the poor sod. By the time I got here he was in the middle of full blown panic attack and then he passed out.” Owen huffed, shooting a glare at Jack who glared back. “I’m no psychiatrist, but I doubt waking up and seeing either of us is going to be all that good for his mental health. And for the record, I only gave him a mild sedative to keep him out until you got here. Under normal circumstances drugging him is the last thing I’d have done. He’s already convinced we’re trying to hurt him, this is _not_ going to help.”

She saw his point, but what was she meant to do? “So what do I do? Surely Suzie would be...”

Jack made stifled noise of incredulity and Owen snorted with a shake of his head. “We want to calm him down, not scare him into a coma.” Owen sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, it’s a bit like with Tommy. He responded well enough to you didn’t he?”

Tosh shrugged one shoulder in agreement, but the doubtful expression remained on her face. 

Owen huffed and lifted the syringe in his hand. “We don’t have time for this. I’ve kept him sedated longer than I wanted to already, so just do your best, I’m waking him up now whether you’re ready or not.”

“No pressure” Tosh mumbled herself, as she watched Owen slide the needle under Ianto’s skin, wincing in sympathy even though she knew the unconscious man couldn’t feel it. Turning back to Ianto, she plastered what she hoped was a reassuring look onto her face and waited for him to wake up. 

“There.” Owen said from behind her, backing away. “Hopefully he should wake up gradually, so he won’t be too much trouble.”

It didn’t take long, and soon enough bleary blue eyes fluttered open. Toshiko opened her mouth to say something, but never got the chance. On the table Ianto jerked violently and made an incoherent shout of fright, eyes wide. 

Hands braced on Ianto’s shoulders, Tosh found it took surprisingly little effort to hold the much larger man down. Keeping her voice soft, she tried to sooth him. “Shh...It’s alright! It’s alright. Shhh... It’s ok. Calm down. No one’s going to hurt you... shhh... take deep breaths.”

Slowly he began to calm, his attempts to get out of Tosh’s hold lessening as his breathing steadied out. He wasn’t any less frightened though, Tosh could see that clearly in his face. His eyes were tight with pain, fear and confusion. 

“Who are you?” He finally said, his voice choked. 

Tosh offered him a soft smile. “My name’s Toshiko. I’m not going to hurt you. We want to help you.”

More confusion creased youthful features. “Help me?”

“You... you had an accident. You were hurt. But you’re safe now. We’re trying to help you.” Tosh explained as best she could, unsure exactly what at this point she should say. It wasn’t like they had a protocol for things like this. 

“Who’s we?”

~Tw~wT~

Torchwood. That’s what Toshiko had said they were called. Such a strange name. Meaningless. It didn’t tell him anything. But that’s what Toshiko had said their organisation was called, and he believed her purely based on the fact that the name seemed to be stamped on everything in the room. 

Ianto stared blankly ahead as the last few hours rattled around his brain.

Had it been hours? He wasn’t sure. It felt like it. And yet it felt like seconds as well. It was all too fast; whirling around him in a mass of confusion and strangeness. Waking up, making his way to that strange chamber. The two men. Waking up again, in the white tiled room. Toshiko. 

She’d been there when he woke up again. She’d talked to him. She had a kind smile and friendly eyes. She kept telling him they didn’t want to hurt him, and he wished he could believe her but she never quite answered his questions. He didn’t want to ask again. They’d proved they could keep him for now, proved they didn’t care. He’d seen guns. Better to keep quiet. 

Now he sat on the bed; no it wasn’t a bed, it was a slab, a cold metal slab. He could feel the cold of it through the thin fabric of his hospital gown, chilling his backside and thighs. Cold like the air around his bare feet and arms. The only part of him that felt warm was his right hand, which Toshiko held in hers. She’d squeeze it gently every now and then and as strange as it was to have a complete stranger hold his hand he was grateful for it. Small comforts. 

_“It’s alright. You can trust us.”_ She’d said.

Trust them? Why would he trust them? But he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t know what they would do, how they’d react. So when they asked him to sit up, he had, even though it had hurt and all he wanted was to lie down and sleep, hopefully to wake up and have this nightmare disappear. 

A sting shot through his left hand and he looked up sharply, finding himself caught in a cool gaze. Dr Owen Harper. One of the two men he’d met in the huge chamber. The one who swore a lot. He currently had Ianto’s left hand in his, and was wrapping a bandage around it. 

“Sorry.” The doctor muttered, sounding only vaguely sincere. Another tug on the bandage, and he let go. “All done.”

“Well?”

A second male voice, and Ianto started. He’d almost managed to forget the other man was there, standing in what appeared to be the entrance to the room, leaning on the railing. Captain Jack Harkness. That’s how he’d introduced himself. The first man he’d met in the chamber. The one who’d told him they couldn’t let him go. It was clear he was in charge. His voice was clipped, firm and brooking no argument. Ianto didn’t know if the man was just currently annoyed or was always like that but he couldn’t help his reaction. Captain Jack Harkness scared the pants off him.

Instead of answering the Captain, Owen kept his back to him and faced Ianto instead. The Welshman got the feeling there had been some kind of discussion going on above his head he hadn’t been privy to. “Well considering you’ve had a run around the tunnels and taken a tumble in the hub you’re in pretty good nick. A few scrapes and bruises, nothing that won’t heal in a few days. You’ll need to keep that hand dry, let the skin heal. Oh and you might find it stings a bit when you pee. Price you pay for yanking out a catheter I’m afraid, just be grateful you didn’t cause any permanent damage.”

“Thanks.” Ianto found himself saying, manners breaking through even when he didn’t really feel like being thankful at all. Swallowing stiffly, he looked at the doctor, quickly flicked his eyes up at the Captain, then settled them on Toshiko. “So, does that mean I can go? You’ll let me go now?”

Toshiko opened her mouth to reply, her face apologetic, but the words came from the raised walkway in a decidedly American twang. 

“No.”

Ianto looked up about to make some kind of protest or plea he wasn’t sure, but the Captain cut him off. 

“You’re too much of a risk.”

“A risk? I’m not a risk... I haven’t done anything wrong.” Ianto shook his head in confusion and denial, once more looking between the three people and as he did so he caught Toshiko looking up at the Captain and getting a nod in return. 

“Ianto...” Toshiko began, and when Ianto just stared at her she gave him a sympathetic look. “What’s the last thing you remember, before waking up here?”

What was the last thing he remembered? His head felt fuzzy, but then it came to him. “I was in the cemetery, I was about to leave.”

“Nothing else after that?” Toshiko asked him gently, squeezing his hand. Ianto shook his head. “Alright, I need to explain some things to you, it’s going to sound strange alright, but you need to trust me.”

~Tw~wT~

One of the advantages of an organisation like Torchwood is that they had access to the best possible technology. One of the disadvantages of having the best possible technology was that at that current moment it was allowing Jack to see in crystal clarity the effects of confinement on a frightened and confused young Welshman.

Sat in his office, his feet up on the desk, Jack rubbed his chin absently as he stared at the monitor on the wall, his eyes never leaving the huddled form in the middle of the bed on the screen. He’d sent the others home early; Tosh and Owen since they were clearly exhausted, and Suzie because one more mention of Torchwood One or UNIT having better facilities to look after Ianto and Jack wasn’t sure he wouldn’t hit her. 

He knew it wasn’t her fault really. She was pragmatic, it was one of the reasons he’d recruited her in the first place, and she wasn’t wrong. Torchwood One did have better facilities. They had a hospital. They had research laboratories and all kinds of scientists on the payroll. UNIT also had a whole plethora of resources at their disposal, not just a ratty old store-room, an over-worked medic and a nervous genius. 

He just couldn’t do it. For all Suzie’s pragmatism, she didn’t know Torchwood One like he did. She knew why he’d cut ties to their sister (much bigger sister) office, but not the kinds of details he knew. Unless she saw it for herself, experienced it, lived with it, she would never truly understand why Jack wouldn’t subject even his worst enemy to their tender mercies, let alone a scared kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

UNIT weren’t nearly as bad. If they themselves couldn’t work out The Pattern, then Jack knew that sending Ianto to UNIT was a very real option. It had to be a last resort though. UNIT was so large Jack knew exactly what would happen to a kid like Ianto there. He’d get lost. Just another number in the system. Just another something they had to deal with. Clinical, impersonal, anonymous. That was UNIT. He’d trust them to look after the population, but not a single person. 

He wasn’t sure why that bothered him so much. But it did. Maybe it was curiosity; the intrigue of finding something completely new. Maybe it was guilt. He thought about all those poor lost souls at Flat Holm that he couldn’t help. That no-one could help, and other than him, no-one seemed to want to try. Victims of the rift that his predecessors would have happily left to rot in the vaults, while he turned a blind eye because it was all he’d been able to do. 

Ianto wasn’t like them. He wasn’t damaged in the way the people on that island were. He was, at least as far as Owen could tell, sound of mind and body. Apart from The Pattern of course. Under any other circumstances the solution would be simple; Retcon him and send him back to his life. These weren’t any other circumstances though were they? No, the only option they had was to keep Ianto until they could at least determine if he was a threat. And if he was a threat, then they’d have to find a way to neutralise him. 

Jack closed his eyes, remembering the fear in Ianto’s eyes. The betrayal; that look someone got when they realised another human being would refuse their plea for aid. There was an old expression - Either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. He was the villain now. He’d rebuilt Torchwood Three to help people, and now he found himself a jailor. Found himself facing the same demon he’d raged against for a century. He’d stolen a young man out of his life and was keeping him locked up against his will. Even when he set out to help people, he had to face the prospect of being judge jury and executioner. All for the greater good.

How Jack hated that phrase. Hated the coldness of it. Hated the truth of it. Some things just had to be done, and some people had to shoulder that responsibility. At least when he’d followed orders for ‘the greater good’ he could pretend to have no choice. Now he had to accept the choice was truly his and his alone. 

Not that he would make it differently. And perhaps that was the worst admission of them all. 

Sighing he pinched the bridge of his nose, unsure where the deep, dark musings were coming from tonight. He usually didn’t suffer clashes of conscience like this. He had to stop thinking of Ianto like a victim. He might well be one, but at the same time he might not be. He could be some kind of sleeper agent, or could in fact be a fully aware alien who’d hijacked Ianto Jones’ body and was a damned good actor. He could be dangerous without even knowing it. Who knew what The Pattern had done, and was still doing to him. 

_“Best case scenario? All that energy dissipates on its own and we can retcon him, stick him in a hospital with some fake story of a car accident and coma, and he goes back to his normal life. Worst case scenario? He turns into a human bomb capable of wiping out most of the planet or we get a re-run of a scene from alien.”_

As blunt a statement as it was, Owen’s pronouncement wasn’t any less true. For all they knew, any of those scenarios could come true. Those and many more; some worse, some just as bad, some not so bad, but all possible.

When Jack opened his eyes again, Ianto was still there on the screen. Still huddled on the bed, wearing the jogging bottoms and T-shirt Tosh had found for him somewhere. Arms wrapped around his drawn up knees. 

He hadn’t said a word in hours. 

Owen had been in earlier with toiletries Tosh had bought. It was just a precaution, Ianto hadn’t shown any signs of hostility, or possibly suicidal behaviour, but it still wasn’t wise to leave him alone with a razor, especially in the bathroom where there wasn’t a camera. Tosh had gone in after, with food. It was still sitting untouched on the desk where Owen’s computer terminal had been. Ianto hadn’t moved since he’d finished in the bathroom. Hadn’t spoken since they’d returned him to his room. 

He just sat there, staring at the opposite wall, occasionally blinking. 

Sometimes Jack really hated his job.


	7. Chapter 7

**Cardiff, September 2004**

Ianto stared, his eyes fixed on the dirty and pealing green paint. Tracing the cracks in the surface, the curling edges revealing a paler shade below. Not that he saw any of it. 

His eyes might be open, but what he saw was inside his own mind. A chaotic cacophony of thought. 

Fear was the predominant feeling that curled its way through the mess in his head. He was lost. Trapped. Forgotten. 

It hadn’t’ bothered him all that much before, how few ties he had to other people. He didn’t really speak to his sister. Obligatory calls on Christmas and birthdays but they never had anything much to say to each other. He wondered if she’d tried to call on his birthday this year, and what she’d thought when he hadn’t called back.

He wondered about his mates, and realised that he didn’t actually have any. Not real ones. There were people on his course who he’d been friendly with, people who’d come to him pleading for lecture notes, or freebies at the coffee shop he’d worked in. He’d never sat alone at lunch or been ignored. He got on with people.

And yet no-one had missed him. Five weeks they’d said. He’d been down here five weeks and no-one had missed him enough to report him missing. He wondered what his flat-mates had done with his belongings. Thrown them out, or maybe they’d just left it for the landlord to clear when their contract had ended. 

All he’d wanted was to get a good degree. To get out. To find something more than he’d grown up with. He’d worked so hard for that. Paying his own way. He’d worked and studied and left no time for much else. People tended to give up extending invitations to social outings after the first few refusals. He’d always refused. He’d always been working. All for a better life. But in the end what had it got him?

Locked up by a bunch of lunatics in a damp basement. No-one was going to find him. No-one cared enough to come looking. These crazy people could do anything they liked to him and he’d be powerless to stop them. He could die down here, and no-one would ever know. 

Oh god. That was it wasn’t it? He was going to die down here. He didn’t know who these people were with their strange name stamped into every surface and object, but they certainly didn’t seem to care about silly little things like civil liberties or human rights. They were the kind of people the saner sections of the population had learned to fear. 

Fanatics. With all their spiel about rifts in time and space, and aliens, and energy patterns. Sci-fi bollocks that normal people would know was just fantasy. What were they, extremist Scientologists? Deluded believers. 

For first time in years, Ianto Jones prayed. For salvation. For mercy. For a way out.

~Tw~wT~

It took a few days for the plan to come to him. Routine could be both blessing and curse. Ianto didn’t have a clock in his room but somehow he could tell that the same amount of time passed between each of the visits to his room. The lights always came on at the same time each morning. Toshiko arrived not long after with a pastry and a cup of tea, tried to talk to him and then took away his usually uneaten or half eaten dinner.

He didn’t ignore her, but he didn’t say much either. 

Shortly after the doctor would show up and would stand outside the bathroom while he did what needed doing. Then would come the tests. He hated the tests. Hated having to try and stop himself shaking through them. Some tests were the same every day. Some were different. The doctor didn’t try and talk to him beyond explaining each step of the tests. Ianto didn’t listen; what did he care what strange warped experiments these freaks were performing? It would all turn out the same in the end wouldn’t it? Either he’d find his way out, or he’d die. He’d only said one thing to the doctor, and only once. He’d looked up and caught his eye just once. 

_“First do no harm.”_

The doctor had narrowed his eyes and given him a considering look, then pushed the needle he’d been holding into Ianto’s arm anyway. 

He’d be left alone for a good space of time after the tests. There wasn’t much to do in his room. In his cell. There were crates and boxes tucked into the corners, but a little exploring showed them to be empty or sealed too tightly for him to get into. The quiet empty time made his head hurt. He didn’t want the nutters near him, and yet the isolation was almost unbearable. 

The empty time would be broken by Toshiko. She’d come with a sandwich usually. Something out of a packet and a bottle of water. She’d smile her shy hopefully sympathetic smile and after hours on his own he’d return it. She’d talk to him some more, say things that he supposed she meant to be reassuring but were just the strange delusions of her warped mind. 

More empty time. He’d get up, wander around the room. He’d read and reread the old newspaper from 1957 he’d found inside one of the boxes. Yellow with age but still readable if a little fragile. 

Toshiko would be back before lights out. More food. He’d have hardly moved all day and his stomach would be in knots. He rarely ate the microwave ready meal she presented him with. He always took the water.

After what always felt like the exact same amount of time, the lights would go out with a clunk. Like the whole building powered down. Pitch dark. He’d be under the covers before then. He hadn’t been the first night and he’d been so lost. 

Eyes open, straining against the dark, he’d lie under the blanket. Sleep would come, it always did, but he dreaded it. 

All the time the plan tumbled through his mind. Different possibilities. Different options. 

Then one day they came for him, and plans went out of the window. 

~Tw~wT~

The atmosphere inside the conference room was stifling. Tosh was sitting at the table, curled low in her chair and radiating unhappiness. Suzie sat opposite her, drumming her nails on the tabletop. Owen was pacing; prowling around the room much like he had done in the quarantine room weeks before. 

“This can’t go on Jack.”

Jack looked up from where he sat at the head of the table, running a knuckle over his pursed lips as he met Owen’s eyes. At least he’d stopped pacing. His team were cracking. He’d chosen good people when he’d picked his team. Damaged but good people. They had suffered. They had hard edges, and enough cynicism to outdo any working man’s club, but they didn’t have the level of clinical coldness that could allow them to watch the suffering of another being for days on end without it drilling into their souls. 

“Then give me something I can work with.” Jack exclaimed quietly, moving his hand to scratch lightly at his forehead. “Tell me you’ve found a way to neutralise or remove The Pattern, or can even tell me what it is. Tell me you can guarantee he isn’t a threat to this planet and I’ll pump him full of retcon and drop him off at the hospital myself.”

Around the table, his team looked at each other and then away. Owen made a scoffing sound and returned to pacing. 

“Owen.” Jack sighed. “Sit down.”

Owen shook his head, and kept on pacing. Raising his hands, clenching his fists, like he was about to say something then stopping short. Eventually he stopped, slammed his hands on the table and looking down its length he eyeballed his superior. “Do you know what he said to me Jack? _First do no harm_. When you recruited me into this hell hole you told me our job was to help people, and now I have a frightened kid quoting the fundamental principal of medical ethics at me! I swore an oath Jack. Above and beyond all other oaths, as a doctor it is my duty to respect that principal! Yet I’m... this isn’t. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

“For all you know that isn’t a frightened kid, but a very clever alien spy.” Jack countered easily, calmly, although inside he felt his team’s unease. Of course he did. 

“Yes yes, I know all that shit. He could be anything. Until we know we can’t take chances blah, blah, blah. Look Jack... I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful... just...”

“He’s breaking.” Tosh’s quiet words sliced through the room. “We’re breaking him.”

“I hate to say it,” Suzie sighed. “But they’re right. This, what we’re doing isn’t right.”

Jack threw his gaze over to his second and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve changed your tune. I thought he was a drain on our already stretched resources. I thought you were all for carting him off to UNIT.” Out of the corner of Jack’s eye, he caught Tosh’s wince.

“And I still think that’s a viable option. But you don’t. So if you’re insisting we keep him here we need to do something with him other than keep him locked in that room.” Suzie tossed back, and then let out a long breath. “I’m not heartless. And seeing him locked up down there makes me feel like...”

“A monster.” Owen spat. “At least that’s how I feel. A heartless fucking monster.”

“He asks... every day.” Tosh practically whispered. “Begs really. _Please let me go._ ” She trailed off with a shake of her head. “I took him a cake yesterday. Because, you know, he missed his twenty first birthday. He just looked at it like it was about to jump up and attack him.”

At the far end of the table, Owen closed his eyes and shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face. “Only you Tosh.”

“I just... I wanted to do something nice for him.” Tosh looked down at the table top. 

Jack looked around the room at the unhappy faces. At all the kindness and compassion escaping from behind those carefully built facades. It was too much.

Standing, Jack paced away from the table and looked out of the floor to ceiling glass of the conference room wall. Out over the hub. “This. What we’re doing. It’s our _job_. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like. Things that feel wrong. But we have to do them. Because in the end the choices we make here could affect the entire _world_. If you can’t deal with that, if you can’t deal with those choices then you don’t belong here.” He waited a moment, and when no argument came, he drew a deep breath through his nose. “Don’t you people have work to do?”

The sound of chairs scraping. Of feet on carpet then metal. The swish of the door. Blessed silence. 

“You are such a bastard Jack Harkness.”

Suzie. Turning sharply, Jack narrowed his eyes at his second who remained in her seat. He watched her in without a word, hands in his pockets, as she pushed away from the table and stood. “I can’t even remember the number of times you’ve told me about Torchwood One. About this place before you took over. How cold. How indifferent it was. And then you stand there and tell us that watching another human being suffer is all part of our job? You bastard. You’re just as bad as they are.”

Running his hands through his hair, Jack gripped the back of his neck and tilted his head back. When he spoke his voice was barely above a whisper, and laced with a plea. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do Suzie. Tell me how I do this the right way, because everything I try comes out wrong.”

Their eyes met, and Suzie pursed her lips, her face softening. “Before you arrived for the meeting Tosh suggested that perhaps we could let him out of his room. We’re planning to retcon him anyway once we’ve worked all this out. Why not let him have a bit more freedom? Maybe even let him outside. With supervision. We need to monitor him, but we don’t need to throw away the key.”

“And if we’re wrong? If he’s dangerous?” Jack threw back. “Protecting all those people out there. _That’s got to be our first priority._ ”

“So we’re very careful. And we deal with things as they happen. We can’t lock someone away forever just because they might be dangerous. You’d have to lock most of the human race away if that was the case.” Suzie laid a comforting hand on his arm with a small smile. “Including all of us.”

Jack gave Suzie a small nod, and looked back through the glass. After a long moment he made his decision. “Tell Tosh when she goes down to give him his lunch to bring him up here would you?... and Suzie?”

“Yes Jack?” Suzie replied from beside the door. 

“Thanks.”

~Tw~wT~

When it happened, it happened too fast. Too soon. Jack’s feet pounded down the concrete tunnels, Owen’s sharp cry still ringing in his ears.

_“Code 5! Code5 in the quarantine room! Fuck he’s lost it! Jack!”_

Code 5. Operative in distress. There was only one operative who was supposed to be in the quarantine room. Tosh. 

Damn it all. Damn it all to hell and back. Just when he’d convinced himself he was over-reacting and let his guard down this happened. He knew it. He damn well knew it. And now Tosh was in danger because of it. 

He was running faster than he’d run in a long time. He could hear the echoed footsteps of Owen and Suzie chasing behind him. His booted feet skidded on the damp concrete as he passed the last doorway and was met with a scene out of a nightmare. Bracing himself Jack raised his gun. 

Ianto Jones was so much taller than Toshiko. The hand in her hair sat below his chin. His other hand held something pressed into Tosh’s neck; long and jagged looking, pointy, but not clearly discernible in the dim lighting of the hallway. Tosh’s face was creased with pain where her head was being yanked back. Her hands flailed before her, each time they touched Ianto’s arm or hand the weapon jerked making her pull them away. 

“I won’t let you do this to me!” Ianto shouted, his face was streaked with tears, red and desperate. “Just let me go!”

Steady even breaths through his nose. Jack took aim. 

“Jack don’t!” Tosh yelled, her words clipped off with yelp as Ianto pulled harder on her hair. “He’s just scared Jack! Don’t shoot him!”

“I’ll kill her! I will.” Ianto cried out, his voice deep and gruff with anguish.

“Tosh now isn’t really the time for the humanitarian approach.” Owen shouted back, sliding in beside Jack, gun raised. 

Jack didn’t reply. He was watching Ianto’s face. 

“Ianto. You’re not well. We’re trying to help you. Remember. Remember what we told you about the energy pattern. We only want to help. We’re not trying to hurt you.” Tosh tried to reason, and Jack felt a bubble of pride under the fear and anger that reddened his vision. 

“Stop it!” Ianto shouted. “Stop lying to me! You’re all crazy! I won’t let you hurt me anymore! I won’t let you kill me!”

Jack fired. 

The bullet ricocheted off the tunnel wall behind Ianto’s head. It was the opening they all needed. Tosh yanked herself free and Owen had hold of her just as fast, pulling her out of harm’s way. Jack pounced forward, throwing Ianto the floor and pinning his arms behind his back. In the chaos something clanked woodenly to the floor.

“No! No!” Ianto shrieked as he fought to free himself. “Get off me! Get off me!!”

Jack couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see. No one hurt his team. No one threatened his people. 

“Jack stop it!” Tosh called out to him desperately. “He doesn’t understand!”

Ianto cried out in pain as Jack forced his arms up behind his back and pulled him up from the floor in the same motion, forcing the Welshman to stumble ahead of him. 

It was too much. The hours spent worrying. The way this whole saga had torn at his team. All this time they’d been trying to help him and then he does this. 

“You don’t understand huh?” He snarled in Ianto’s ear. “Well let me make it plain as day.”

Ianto was crying openly, fighting him still as Jack marched him down tunnel after tunnel. Jack ignored the calls of his team behind him, ignored the whimpers and mewls of the man who had threatened one of his.

“You think we’re crazy?” Jack finally hissed, once they’d turned off a tunnel into a dark room. Pushing Ianto’s face against a glass wall, he held him in place with one hand as he reached out with the other to flip a switch on the wall. Light bloomed in the small cell, drenching the squatting figure within. Brown leathery skin, sharp teeth, slitted alien eyes. “Look at it!”

Ianto whimpered again. 

“Look. At. It!” Jack shook him again.

Suddenly Ianto began to fight with even more vigour, screaming out with increasing volume. “No. No. No. NO! NO!”

The blast took Jack off his feet from brilliant light into pitch darkness, a shower of sparks raining from the light fitting making the rest of the team duck. The creature in the cage whined and scampered to the back. The buzz of discharging current rang in the air. The crackle of electrics shorting out. 

Stillness rained for an eternal moment, as everyone in the room tried to process what had happened. Blinking, Jack pulled himself into a sitting position, barely registering the red emergency lights coming on. Why would he notice when the room had already been half lit by a soft blueish-white glow coming from the corner? 

There, backed against the wall, sat Ianto. His hands, fingers curled, held in front him as he stared at them in horror, his entire being radiating soft light. “What... what’s happening...”

“Well shit.” Owen exclaimed. “That’s new.”

Jack heard, rather than saw the vague scuffle of his team attempting to hold Toshiko back but soon enough she had dropped to her knees in front of Ianto. Even as they watched, the glow was fading.

“It’s real... everything... it’s not possible...” Ianto looked at Tosh, his eyes imploring. “What’s happening to me?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to find out.” Tosh replied kindly, reaching out and taking his hands in hers. 

For a second Ianto could only stare at their hands, and then he looked up at Tosh with an expression of pure horror. “Oh god. I hurt you. Oh god. What’s...I’m.... sorry. I’m so sorry...I’m sorry. I’m sorry... ”

“Shhh... It’s ok. I understand. It’s alright.” Tosh whispered, pulling him into her arms, rocking him as he cried.

Jack didn’t notice he’d been backing away until his boot heels met the wall behind him.


	8. Epilogue

**Cardiff, September 2004**

The breeze coming off the bay had a chill to it, but to Ianto it felt like heaven against his skin. Like water felt to a man dying of thirst. After nearly seven weeks underground, just being able to feel the wonder of cool fresh air was like a gift from the very gods themselves. 

Funny, the things people took for granted. Like fresh air, and the sparkle of sunlight on water, or the wonder of pure natural light. Forearms leant against the quayside railing, Ianto took them all in. Soaked them up and relished them. The cry of gulls, the chatter of people. It was bliss, just to stay perfectly still and enjoy the moment. 

The sunlight was bright though, and he squinted as he tried to see out over the bay. Seven weeks underground didn’t do wonders for a person’s eyesight. 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, just basking. But eventually the moment broke. A presence appearing beside him. Familiar and alarming all at once, making him tense and shudder. 

“Is it time already?”

The man beside him copied his pose, and Ianto could see his stern, chiselled profile out of the corner of his eye. 

“Not quite yet.” The man replied, smooth American accent giving nothing away. Captain Jack Harkness. The leader of Torchwood Three. Alien hunter. Protector of the oblivious. And Ianto Jones’ jailor. “How’s the arm?”

Ianto found himself glancing at the top of his left shoulder and shrugging. 

“Sore.” He replied, unsure how to talk to the man who held so much power over him. 

Jack snorted quietly. “From where I yanked it or from the implant?”

The Implant. Alien technology. Or maybe future technology. Torchwood seemed to have more than its fair share of both. Either way it was something that had been recovered from the rift and it was now sitting under the skin of his left shoulder. Monitoring him. Keeping him on a leash. Three hundred metres. That’s all he had. Three hundred small metres. And never to be walked unaccompanied. 

At least, not until they knew what it was inside him. Until they worked out if he was safe to be let out of their sight. They hadn’t told him what would happen should he reach his limit. Given the arguments about the implant that he’d overheard, he was guessing it wouldn’t be pleasant.

It was still hard to wrap his head around. Aliens and rifts and energy patterns. And yet, in his dreams he now saw burning air and lightning. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his hands glowing. He would remember what it felt like to have so much raw power leave him. It was terrifying. Beyond terrifying. He’d already hurt Toshiko, he couldn’t bear to think of hurting someone else. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto realised the Captain had stopped waiting for him to answer and was staring out at the bay again. Biting his lip, Ianto asked the question that had plagued him for the last two days. “How’s Toshiko... is she... is she ok?”

“She’s fine. She’s tougher than she looks. She’ll be back tomorrow.” The Captain replied evenly, and then he turned, the weight of his gaze making Ianto turn his head to receive it. “If you ever, _ever_ threaten one of my people again. I _will_ kill you.”

Ianto nodded, ducking his head and swallowing thickly. Captain Jack Harkness still scared the ever holy shit out of him, and now he’d given the man reason to want to hurt him. 

“Glad we’re clear on that.” Jack nodded and pushed away from the railing. Puffing out a breath, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his RAF great-coat. “Another five minutes. I’m going to get a coffee. Want one?”

“No...” Ianto shook his head rapidly, unsure how to respond to such a turnabout of sentiment. Threatening to kill someone and then offering them coffee seemed somewhat incongruous. “Thanks.”

“Five minutes.” Jack reminded him, then strode off, calling back over his shoulder as he did. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Looking back out to sea, Ianto took another deep breath of wonderful, cool fresh air.

~Tw~wT~

_It was amazing how quickly life could change._

_Blink and you miss it. That defining moment. That single point in time where everything changes. It can happen so fast that it’s barely even noticeable, or it can slam into you full force, knocking you down, dragging you under._

_One moment you’re getting on with your life, dreaming of more but really just hoping that tomorrow will continue much like today. And then it all explodes. Turns inside out and back to front forcing you to learn everything from scratch. Forcing you to open your eyes to what you were never prepared to see. Making you feel so small, so insignificant and at the same time reminding you to count the blessings you have because next time you blink you might not have even those._

_Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Most times it just is. You can either let it define you, or you can define it, but whichever you chose, you have to face it. There is no turning back. No rewinding time. These moments happen, whether we want them to or not._

_I was just a student. Nothing special. Just a student. Just finished my final exams. Looking forward to the future I had planned out for myself. Then I went home._

_I’ve heard it said the twenty-first century is when everything changes. For me it already has._

_For me it was the moment the world tore and I stepped into the storm._

 

Fin.


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